


Speed Reading

by Carbocat



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint's a good guy, Illiteracy, Pietro just wants to learn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 04:24:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3922789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbocat/pseuds/Carbocat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn’t think he was the first to notice but he sure as hell was the first to put the pieces together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speed Reading

He didn’t think he was the first to notice but he sure as hell was the first to put the pieces together.

It started small, with an untouched stack of magazine and books on hospital side tables and how every ‘read a book, kid’ to every ‘I’m so borrred’ were met with withering glares and looks of exasperation. It was the way his eyes glazed over when someone passed a newspaper or a StarkPad around the breakfast table, how he stared at it just a bit too long, and mission reports were left untouched. How they ended up watching Parental Guidance instead of Paranormal Activity because he grabbed the wrong movie from the DVD case.

How there was a nice and new hole in Stark’s lab’s floor after he’d asked Pietro to retrieve a bottle of something that ended with –ide from Bruce’s lab. How he ended up with some reactive and dangerous –ic chemical. And because Tony didn’t check the label on things (and really they should have called in Bobbi, or someone with a PhD in biology, to handle all the Bruce stuff), it melted through the floor when he dropped it. How the kid just shrugged and zipped away before Tony’s face got even redder.

He handed back newspapers with tight smiles and quiet thanks to Steve for sharing, tossed Starkpads back hazardously with sarcastic comments about wasting his time. He pulled Sudoku puzzles from the hospital magazines and brushed off wrong movie picks with stiff shoulders. Smirked uneasily when Tony accused him (jokingly, somewhat, probably) of trying to kill him before zipping off to go find Wanda.

He thought he was just being a pain in the ass because the kid was nothing if not a sarcastic, annoying, whiney, won’t-sit-still-for-a-single-second, I’m-going-to-shoot-him-with-a-goddamn-arrow pain in the ass since the first moment he met him.

It wasn’t until Tony, when Steve had taken the twins to their first dentist appointment in over a decade (and hopefully out of Wanda’s mind-reading radius), muttered something about annoying Speedsters and language barriers. He wasn’t even talking to Clint; too busy sorting through which bottles of chemicals he didn’t need. Pietro had responded to Tony’s rant that he was fucking with him by bringing him potassium hydroxide instead of phosphoric acid by bringing every chemical he could find in the building and dumping them all over his workstation, there was even hair dye.

Clint didn’t even really have a reason to be in there other than he was bored and occasionally Tony made things blow up. Natasha was on a mission with Hill, Sam was at his _real_ job, someone broke the PlayStation (97% sure it was Maximoff), and he’d seen the kid rummaging through Natasha’s drawers and got curious. Tony’s words struck something in him; scratching the surface of something Clint couldn’t quite identify. Making him think back to when he first met Natasha, when she hadn’t quite ridded herself of her accent, and how some American idioms confused the hell out of her; maybe the kid was just unfamiliar with seeing English plastered on everything.

“Maybe he just doesn’t like you,” he suggested, pushing away that feeling that he was missing something that was right in front of him, something he should be seeing, something familiar, important.

“No,” Tony responded rolling his eyes. “He doesn’t like _you_. He hates me. And now he’s trying to kill me.”

“Would potassium hydroxide actually kill you?” he asked curiously.

“That’s not important,” Tony said instead, so _no._ “It’s the principal of the matter.”

 

 _‘Maybe dyslexic,’_ he thought tired, slouching farther into the couch as they watched Lost in Space instead of the group’s post-mission favorite, Lilo and Stitch.

It was fine, not that big of a deal.

It was just that they’d all had to deal with not only Victor von Doom’s power-tripping and his irritating as hell doombots, but also with Pietro staring at the DVD case for ten freaking minutes only to grab the wrong movie. No one said anything, just like no one got up to get the right movie, because they were tired and it didn’t matter. Because four hours prior the kid had threw a big tantrum about being left behind, because he had ripped his stitches and spent the better part of two hours being patched back up again. But mostly because Wanda had that look on her face that said she’d turn you into a lamp if you mentioned it, and they weren’t really sure if that wasn’t something she could do.

 _‘Close enough_ ,’ he thought settling in as the kid dropped in between him and the arm of the couch, asleep in less than a minute. _‘Maybe Tony was on to something.’_

 

It wasn’t until their next mission that he thought anything more about the kid that didn’t start with how the kid had constantly looked tired, pale, weak, still, and a lot of other words that described how much like shit he looked ever since he gasped awake in a hospital bed three months prior. Recovery from eleven bullets wounds was a slow and frustrating process that sapped the energy from the kid, made him lethargic, sleepy, and prone to spacing out staring at the coffee pot in the kitchen (which they made clear that under no circumstance should he ever so much as touch it, even if it’s to beat an evil robot over the head with it).

He, Cap, Widow, and…whatever Wanda was calling herself were sent out to take out a Hydra base up in the Canadian wilderness that was rumored to be making their own Super Soldier Serum. Simple mission, in and out, they’d be home in a few hours.

Pietro was on the quinjet when they got there; doing a Sudoku puzzle in the pilot’s chair like he didn’t have a care in the world (which would have been more believable if his leg wasn’t shaking at a million miles per hour and he would have had a pen with him). He didn’t look up until Steve was standing directly in front of him with his hands on his hip and the word ‘no’ already on his lips.

It was great, that Steve was going all American dad on him because Clint would have used to words ‘fuck no’ and ‘get the hell out of here, kid’ and probably would have gotten that patented ‘don’t swear in front of the child, Clint, goddamn’ look from Steve.

The kid was stubborn, refused to leave the jet, sped out of Cap’s grip when he tried to forcible remove him. He said he felt fine, that the doctor’s gave him some papers at his last appointment that proved it. He crossed his arms, threw his puzzle onto the group, and told Steve that his sister wasn’t facing Hydra without him there.

Steve was stubborn, more stubborn that the history books ever let on, but they were short on time. He sighed with Pietro’s last insistence that he’d listen, he promised.

“You stay on the jet,” he said motioning for Clint to get said jet up and running. “I mean it.”

“Of course, Captain.”

Clint rolled his eyes as the kid sped over to Wanda with a bright smile. She looked about as unhappy about him tagging along as Clint felt.

The base had more security than they were lead to believe, more fire power than necessary, and they seemed to know they were coming which just sucked.

 Instead of listening to Cap’s orders like the damn kid insisted he’d do and stay in the jet like he was explicitly told to do multiple times by everyone (but no one more than Wanda), he darted out into battle fifteen minutes before War Machine and Falcon were due to arrive. Clint understood why, Hydra idiots were closing in on Wanda and everyone else was a bit too preoccupied trying not to die to give her a hand, but it was still a stupid ass thing to do.

Clint knew that Steve should have pushed for what exactly the papers the doctor gave Pietro said because it sure as hell didn’t say ‘combat ready.’ There was no freaking way, the kid was laid up mostly dead three months ago, and he took naps at four in the afternoon and winded going up the stairs. But there he was, zipping back and forth, knocking agents off their feet and then gone before anyone could get a lock on him.

He kept an eye out for him, just in case. The kid, though still faster than any man should be was slower than he typically was. Because, and Clint like to think he wasn’t the only one who thought it, the kid wasn’t one hundred percent.

The odds were turning in their favor, War Machine and Falcon took out the big guns. Clint thought briefly that if they were lucky they might make it back before Dancing with the Stars started.

Then Quicksilver went down and he felt his heart plummet.

He caught Clint’s eyes when he stumbled to a stop in the middle of a clearing, catching his breath with his hands rested against his knees. He straightened quickly as if he heard something. Clint got an arrow ready in an instant, scanning about the speedster for an intruder but found none. Then like cutting a piano spring, the kid’s muscles went loose and he collapsed into the tall grass.

Clint was running.

Before he realized he was running, he was running then he was stumbling, tripping over tree roots and landing weirdly on his hand. He scrambled back onto his feet, closing the distance as fast as he could between him and the kid, who hadn’t so much as bent a blade of grass since collapsing.

Clint flipped him over; looking for darts or bullets but finding neither. He was acutely aware that Wanda was suddenly beside him. She sounded calm, a forced calm that didn’t quite cover the swell of anxiety and worry, as she demanded to know what had happened, if he was alright – please be alright, Pietro, please – and getting into the heads of any Hydra agent that so much as thought about looking in their direction.

“He’s breathing,” he told her, relief flooding into him, but he couldn’t offer anything else. He wasn’t a doctor, they needed one. “Contact Cap, I’ll get him to the jet.”

 

It wasn’t until he felt Quicksilver’s fist against his jaw and all of his teeth rattled in his mouth that it all clicked together.

It wasn’t dyslexia or a language barrier, he thought as he stumbled backwards, dropping the papers that said the kid should in no way be allowed into the field, that healing meant he was burning through calories like there was no tomorrow, and running outside of a controlled environment was a big fat no-no. His own words – _can’t you read, you goddamn idiot_ – danced around his head like metaphorical stars.

“I’m not stupid,” he snapped, accent thicker with anger and a defeated kind of exhaustion. His hands were clenched, shaking with what could be anger or the low blood sugar that caused him to collapse in the first place. Clint thought it was a little of both.

He stalked off, ignoring Wanda’s insistence that he came back here right now and the nurse’s rather monotonous warning of the dangers of low blood sugar.

He made it to the door before hitting the floor.

Wanda sighed, “Idiot.”

It was the words, he knew it as he helped get Pietro into a bed – _can’t you read?_

It hit Clint like a bullet between the eyes. How had he missed the walls of defense that the kid had up, how he had stiffened and then shook with hurt feelings when he rudely challenged his intelligence, and just why those walls and emotions were so familiar in the first place?

It wasn’t dyslexia. It wasn’t a language barrier, or just wanting to be a pain in the ass.

The kid couldn’t read.

 

The next time he saw him was a few days later, not for lack of trying. The kid was good at hiding; even more so now that he somehow managed to get F.R.I.D.A.Y. on his side. Any time they were in the same room, he’d zip out with a trail of blue and silver the moment they made eye contact.

There was a mission, Code Green.

With Banner out of the picture, everyone was called in to suit up. Everyone except him because of a damn sprained wrist and Speedy, who was on a short leash with absolutely everyone until the doctors okayed him for field work.

Wanda had cornered him before leaving and told him that Pietro had pushed himself too hard during physical therapy ( _again_ wasn’t said but he heard it anyways). He’ll be tired now, so someone needed to make sure he ate before going to sleep.

And by someone, she meant him.

He found the kid where Wanda said he’d be, folded in on himself in the corner of the couch in Tony’s personal lounge, biggest TV in the building, comfiest couch. Clint didn’t know how he even managed to get the passcode. He had to spent ten minutes begging F.R.I.D.A.Y. and promise that he just needed to check on Pietro to even get her to open the door (Clint missed JARVIS almost as much as Tony).

The kid was still, too still, at least for him. His feet were still shaking from where they stuck out from under his blanket, but the hyperactive energy that rolled off the kid the first time they met had yet to come back in full. It was weird, unsettling, and unnatural.

He didn’t, however, expect was that he appeared to be very into this episode of Dora the Explorer.

“Swiper is right there,” he muttered as she repeatedly asked where the orange fox was. Then when Swiper did swipe Dora’s telescope and chuck it, he sighed and threw his hands into the air exasperated, “and you didn’t even keep it! Estúpido!”

“My daughter loved this show,” he said from the doorway, a grin plastered across his face when Pietro scrambled up from the couch, tripping over the thick blue quilt that had been covering him (Steve’s, no doubt). His eyes darted to the TV and then back to Clint as if he was trying to come up with something to justify why he was watching a kids show at three in the afternoon. Clint was tempted to wait, just to watch him squirm. “When she was five.”

“I–” he faltered. “I’m waiting, the next, I–”

The universe, it seemed, had taken reprieve from throwing tantrum-throwing demi gods and homicidal robots (and fucking termites in his barn) into Clint’s life and had set its sights into his very own bullet-ridden speedster. The TV announced, as Pietro tried and failed to come up with a logical reason he would be waiting for something to come on Nick Jr, the continuation of the Dora marathon. He glared at it like he couldn’t believe that it had betrayed him.

“Let’s make a cake,” he said for lack of something better. The kid still needed to eat and Clint had some things he needed to figure out.

“Eh?” Pietro questioned as Clint turned on his heels and walked out of the room.

“Come on, kid,” he called over his shoulder.

 

“Not a kid.”

Clint turned away from the row of untouched cookbooks – why did Tony own so many? He didn’t even cook! – secretly pleased that he’d actually followed him, to find the kid standing in the doorway. His typically messy hair was an even messier tangle of white curls and Steve’s quilt was wrapped loosely around his shoulders as he stifled a yawn.

Clint raised an eyebrow – he wasn’t putting up a very convincing argument – before narrowing them at him. He took in the too big Coney Island sweatshirt that slipped over his hands, the black sweatpants with the purple stripe down the side that didn’t quite reach his feet, and the mismatch socks.

“What?” He asked, disappearing before reappearing in a seat at the counter.

“Does Steve know your stealing his stuff?” he responded giving him his disapproving dad look. It didn’t quite have the same effect as it did on Cooper when he tracked mud into the house as Pietro responded by laying his head down on his arms.

“I don’t care about the sweatpants, by the way,” he added, because, yeah, those were the sweatpants he’d been looking for since last Thursday. “And Steve’s not going to bitch over a sweatshirt but if you continue to steal Natasha’s socks she might kill you…with her thighs.”

“She’d have to catch me first,” he muttered, not lifting his head.

“Hey, don’t fall asleep on me,” he said poking him with a spoon until he lifted his head to glare at him.

“Why cake?”

“You’re sister said you had to eat, she didn’t say it had to be healthy,” he responded lightly, grabbing one of the many cookbooks and dropping it in front of him. “And because it’s cake. Now figure out what kind you want and I’ll get the ingredients.”

Clint broke Pietro’s glassy eyed stare, causing the kid to jump, when he placed a plate with a sandwich, or five, next to him.

“I thought we were having cake?” he asked, pushing the book back towards Clint before taking one of the sandwiches.

“Cake takes time,” he muttered. “Not surprised you chose a chocolate cake.”

He shrugged and another sandwich disappeared.

“So, you trying to learn Spanish?” he asked pulling out flour and getting the eggs from the fridge. He kept his eyes on the kid as he continued to pull out ingredients they needed, watched as he stiffened and swallowed hard.

“Yes,” he replied only after Clint looked away to add flour into a bowl. Too defensive, too much time taken to answer, not enough conviction; who taught this kid to lie?

“Natasha’s probably a better teacher than Dora.”

“Nice to know,” the kid muttered.

“I could ask her, you know, if you really–”

“I’m not stupid,” he blurted out, ducking his head to avoid Clint’s eyes.

“I know,” he said softly as he cracked eggs into the bowl of flour. “I know.”

“I’m not,” he repeated.

“It was rude of me to say something like that, kid,” Clint replied keeping his voice soft and smooth, watching as the tension seeped from his muscles and exhaustion took over once more. “It scared me when you collapsed, I was angry. I’m sorry.”

“I think we’re even though,” he added, gesturing to the bruise that had blossomed along his jaw.

“Can’t take a punch, old man?”

“Not old,” he grumbled. “Now, is it half a cup of cocoa powder or a whole cup?”

“Uh,” he stuttered, his eyes scanning the book completely before looking back up. “Half a cup.”

“And its four teaspoons of vanilla extract, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Who else knows you can’t read?” he asked lightly, adding the actual amount of vanilla to the bowl. Tact had never been his thing; not unless he was working someone for the job. But this wasn’t a mission, and the kid deserved more than deceit and tricks.

He kept his eyes facing away from Pietro, but he didn’t need to look to know the kid went completely still. The continuous beating of his foot against the side of the counter stopped immediately, as did the tapping of his fingernails of the marble top.

He chanced a look, pretending to check the recipe; the kid had gone noticeably pale. Like really, pale, close-to-passing-out, remember-when-I-was-kind-of-dead pale, which said a lot because the kid was ghostly to begin with. His face was blank and unmoving like he was wearing a mask and his eyes were wide as he stared at Clint, following his every move.

Then the mask cracked, splinting into a smirk, “What are you talking about?”

“Wanda, I’m guessing,” he continued, if it was anything else he would have dropped the subject but not this. “The whole mind reading thing for one, I guess, but also with her being your sister and everything.”

“I – no,” he shook his head quickly. “You are wrong.”

“Read this then,” he challenged, sliding the cookbook back over to him. It was cruel and it was mean, but he wanted to help. Pietro just had to admit to it first.

“Shut up!” he snapped, pushing the book away with enough force to send it off the counter and onto the floor. “Shut up, you don’t know anything.”

“I get it,” Clint tried to comfort. The kid was working himself into what could become a panic attack and Clint was not about to let the control slide from his hands. He had this.

“No you don’t,” he snapped back, glaring back at him. Those walls of defense were back up, but they were crumbling. Clint guessed that no one else had put the pieces together in a long, long time.

“I do,” he replied. “My parents died when I was six. My brother and I bounced around foster homes for a while before running off to the circus.”

“Yeah,” he added, with a small smirk of his own when Pietro’s eyebrow rose at that. “The circus, I know. English, math, that stuff wasn’t considered as important than if I got the shot. I had the basics. It was good enough for them. My SO when I got to SHIELD taught me the rest. An education is a luxury that not all of us are given, I get it.”

“We had to eat,” he said after a while, after Clint had finished mixing the cake batter and shoved it into the oven, with a shrug of his shoulders. His voice sounded as distant as his eyes look. He looked more like a kid than Clint had ever seen him, huddled in on himself avoiding eye contact; all that confidence that pissed him off was no longer there.

This was that kid, Clint thought. The one that was pulled out of the wreckage of their old apartment building, the scared kid with dust in his eyes and hand and hand with his sister. The kid from before the anger set in, before his blood boiled with rage and he thirsted for revenge, before he built up walls of arrogance and snarky comments, before he was fast enough to run away from his problems – he was still just a kid that was hurting and scared and left alone in a big scary world.

“The orphanage was no good,” he continued, voice purposely flat, eyes glued to the table. “We were better off on the streets. Wanda, she is smart, smarter than me so she went to school, I worked where I could.”

“It is not important,” he added, shrugging again, sounding very much like he thought that it was very important.

“What about before,” he asked because the file said they were ten when their parents died. Lila and Cooper could read well before the age of ten, they started teaching them in kindergarten now.

He shrugged once more, looking even sadder than Clint thought anyone could, “We moved a lot, things get left behind and things don’t get picked up. Wanda lost her bear when we moved to Slovakia. It was tragic.”

“I was,” he continued then shook his head as if everything was absurdly amusing, tapping at his temple. “Slow learner.”

He laughed, mouth twisting into a wide pained grin, but neither held humor. Yeah, things got left behind when kids bounced from place to place like stuffed animals and things didn’t get picked up like reading skills and mathematics. Their path was paved with missed opportunities, knowledge they’d never obtain, and possibilities for futures that would never be.

“No one cared about the kid in the back that couldn’t sit still,” he muttered.

Clint could picture it; the energy that coursed through the kid now had probably always been there in some way. Tiny little Pietro, new little Pietro, jumping and running wide-eyed with wonder and optimism before bombs, war, and fucking Hydra could rip that from him. He could picture how teachers, in classrooms with too many kids, looked at two more kids to teach, placed them in the back, and then forgot.

He pictured, bright blue eyes carrying books to adults who were far too busy to sound out words or explain definitions because the kid he’d seen wake up in that hospital bed was a learner. That kid was curious and enthusiastic when nurses explained what they were doing. He listened to stories of Thor’s battles and compared them with the myths he’d heard as a child. He asked questions about Steve’s life in the forties, forgoing the war, which brought Steve relief, and focused more on life in New York during the Great Depression and his stint in art school. He handed tools to Tony as he explained the inner workings of a corvette, moseyed around his lab asking what this was or that and if it’d kill someone if he threw it at Barton.

A thirst for knowledge wasn’t something you picked up later in life, rarely was it something that ever dimmed, and in that kid it was bright in his eyes as he listened.

But some kids, like him, like Wanda and Pietro, were not afforded the opportunity to learn; forced to grow up, provide, and toughen up before they had the opportunity to be a kid. Learning English or reading Shakespeare became less important when you had to figure out your next meal, where you were going to sleep that night, if you and the people you care about were going to have enough to make it to the next day.

“I’m not stupid,” he said again, said it like he was repeating someone else’s words and trying to convince himself.  

“I mean, you’re still an idiot,” Clint spoke up, causing the kid to snap his head up at him so quickly that Clint thought if it was possible for him to get whiplash he would. “Just not about the reading thing. Only an idiot would run out in front of a bunch of bullets to save an old man.”

“Some people would call that bravery,” he replied, a smile chasing away the sadness.

“Same thing,” he shot back, matching his smile. “And both you and your sister did sign up to let some Nazi’s experiment on you, if that’s not the dumbest sh–”

“Wanda shouldn’t have been there,” he cut off, his brow furrowing in what had to be self-loathing. “She should have gone to college. She is smart, good at math, statistics, wanted to teach. She was supposed to go to college.”

“Why didn’t she?” he asked.

“I – during the riots the police showed up, we got separated,” he told him. “I got arrested. It was…not my first time and they were going to send me to prison. Wanda would have been alone, it wasn’t a safe time to be alone. Then this man offered me a deal.”

“Strucker?”

“I didn’t know it was Hydra,” he continued. “They’d give me money, for Wanda if I agreed to go. They said they’d protect her, make sure she was safe. I didn’t know about the experiments so I went, _alone_.”

“Three days,” he said holding up three fingers. “I was there three days and then she was by my side. She came voluntarily, fucking volunteered for _that_. They lied, they wouldn’t protect her.  It was my fault. Now she’s in danger every day and I sit here.”

“People make their own choices, Pietro,” he told him as the oven timer dinged. “Wanda’s a big girl; she knows what she’s doing.”

“It is not safe for her.”

“I’ve been told on good authority that she is very smart,” he smirked sliding a piece of cake over to him before getting serious. “About the reading, I can help you if you really want to learn.

“Can we not talk about that, yeah?” He whined, mouth full of cake. Clint fought the urge to tell him to swallow before speaking.

“Sure, let’s talk about why Sam handcuffed you to Mjolnir last week,” he responded lightly, only to get a glare in return. “Seriously, I want to help.”

“Why?”

“Because not everyone is afforded the education of Tony Stark but everyone should have the opportunity to one. Plus I’m a ten times better teachers than anyone on Nick Jr.”

 

Pietro wasn’t a slow learner, just not as fast as he wanted to be.

And impatient as hell.

Progress with this was much like the progress he was making with healing from the Slovakia battle: frustrating.

It wasn’t starting from the beginning because once upon a time Pietro had picked up a bit of this but it was pretty damn close to teaching a five year old. He knew the sounds, it was stringing them together that he had a problem with.

He was short tempered, frustrated easily  and had destroyed more than a few of Cooper’s old book. He was discouraged easily when something didn’t come natural, and quite a few of their study sessions ended with Pietro storming out or getting Clint so rallied up that it ended with a screaming match.

Steve had pulled him aside later that day, after Pietro had stormed out of Clint’s room so fast that he went through a wall and ended up back in the infirmary, to ask him if anything was up. If this was an issue that the whole team should know about, and Clint being Clint made up some lie that alluded to nightmares that Pietro didn’t have (as far as he knew) and helping him after his near-death that ultimately ended with Steve backing off and Clint feeling horrible.

He felt significantly worse when Sam showed up the next day and sat down a confused Pietro to talk about his past trauma. And how when the kid wasn’t looking Tony stared at him with understanding and compassion instead of annoyance when he brought him the wrong bottles.

Though Pietro did start looking like he was sleeping better when Sam’s meeting with him started to become weekly so Clint didn’t feel so bad.

Clint was watching Dog Cops, frustrated with himself and the kid after the Harry Potter book he picked up at a thrift store was destroyed. The kid refused to so much as breath in his direction and Clint was really fucking okay with that. It was mistake to think he could help that stupid stubborn son of a bitch anyway.

It wasn’t until Wanda sat down beside him that he noticed she had even walked into the room. She was staring at him with that knowing look; he suspected that she really did know whatever it was that she thought she knew that he knew. She sat there for a while watching the program until whispering that Pietro learned best when it didn’t feel like he was learning before disappearing as quietly as she appeared.

The next day he dragged the kid by the ear down to the archery range for archery lessons (Steve had been bugging him for months that he should teach the kid). The walls were littered with post-it notes with words scribbled onto them; so many so that Pietro just stood in confusion in the middle of the room and didn’t even notice Clint locked the door.

“We’re making sentences today,” Clint said grabbing a practice bow. “That’s the game, best sentence wins.”

“Who decides that?”

“I do,” he replied smoothly setting an arrow.

“That’s not fair.”

“Nouns are there,” he said ignoring the kid’s whine, letting off an arrow in that direction before pointing out what was where, letting an arrow off with every point. He’d figure out later what to tell Tony about why the walls in the range were littered with holes. “What does that say?”

“Can’t you read?” the kid asked sarcastically from where he was sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Clint had to stop himself from responding with a sarcastic _can’t you?_ He chose instead to tell the kid to get off his ass.

“Quick sil-silver,” he started darting up so he could see the post-it. “Your handwriting is horrible, you know that?”

“Yeah, yeah, read the damn sentence, Speedy.”

“Quicksilver runs into a,” he paused shooting Clint a look that was a mix of ‘what the fuck is this?’ and questioning if he was doing this right. Clint smiled back, encouraging him to finish. “Wall? That was one time!”

“It’s been three times, that I know of,” Clint countered. “Now get over here. You’re turn.”

Pietro’s arrows went everywhere, and none ever going where he planned on them going, which frustrated the kid (and Clint too because if he would just listen, he’d get it).

“Stupid Tony,” he began, grinning at the coincidence. “Hit…r-rage mon-ster? Rage monster?”

“Yeah,” Clint told him then gestured for him to continue.”

“Stupid Tony hit rage monster,” he repeated. “With…hawk eye.”

“Well that’s just rude.”

 

They continued with their game.

Clint throwing in harder and harder words working up through his kid’s old spelling list then off to words he found in dictionaries.  The sentences got bigger, more complex, and completely hilarious the better Pietro got at shooting.

_Nick Fury atrociously exaggerated accounts of quixotic endeavors with eccentric tycoon Tony Stark._

They progressed into Clint yelling out words – _Wanda and Vision sitting in a tree_ – and Pietro hitting them. Then it was spelling out words. One day he walked in to find new yellow post-it notes up with his pink ones and the Maximoffs muttering to each other in their native language as Pietro took aim and fired. He left it to them that day.

A few months later, when Pietro was finally ready to join the team out on a mission, Clint found him reading through the taped-together pages of Harry Potter on the way there. Tony, who Clint thought he might actually kill if he commented on it, offered the kid his set if he wanted to read the rest of them. Both Wanda and Clint sighed in relief when Pietro grinned and thanked him.

Pietro had a habit of speed reading. The entire Harry Potter series was finished in two days, then the Hunger Games, Percy Jackson, Divergent, Odd Thomas, The Maze Runner, and then the lounge was becoming more and more littered with YA Lit until Tony built shelves in his room.

He moved on quickly, advancing his literature to include most of Neil Gaiman’s work, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series took an entire two weeks to finish before it was added to the shelves. He read Tony’s biography and all of Steve’s, skimmed through Bruce’s lab notes, read up on Thor’s mythology (and became fascinated with Loki much to Clint’s annoyance). Lord of the Rings was finished in a day, Mary Steward, all of Natasha’s Richard Castle books, David Foster Wallace (yes Clint, _Infinite Jest_ is just as pretentious as it sounds), and even Shakespeare.

Less and less with each book devoured, the kid came to him for help with words, archery practice became just that, and Clint couldn’t help the smile that came across his face every time he found the kid slumped over a book asleep.

Tony did eventually flip shit over the couple dozen holes in the archery range, but grudgingly fixed it with only mild complaint.

 

It was later, possibly two weeks.

He and Natasha had been sent off on an away mission, a stupid watch but do not engage mission that any of SHIELD's new probies could do that resulted in both of them being awake for the better part of three days. Clint was not convinced that Fury was not just fucking with them because they got him a birthday care that called him dad (and was about five years off his age…and two weeks after his birthday but it was the thought that counted, right?).

He was out cold the moment his ass hit the couch in the lounge, missing Natasha’s grumble about getting in his actual bed like a goddamn adult, Barton.

Sleeping on the couch was a risky thing to do, more risky than messing around with the coffee machine. You could wake up missing an eyebrow, or handcuffed to the leg of the coffee table. You could find yourself glued to the ceiling…again.

He shook himself awake, took in the empty room and the setting sun. The only thing that had changed was that the TV had been turned off and someone draped a blanket over him (heavy blue quilt, Steve’s, no doubt).

There was a yellow post-it note stuck to his forehead and he pulled it off as soon as his hands started following the orders his brain gave.

In admittedly neat cursive:

_Thanks for the opportunity, old man. –Q._

 

 


End file.
